Our Ways Will Part
by Cerulean.Phoenix7
Summary: There is no greater loss than that of a child.


Our Ways Will Part

A/N: This is set during 5.01 "Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11", just prior to Etta and Peter breaking into the complex where Walter is being held, and follows events up to the end of 5.04 "The Bullet that Saved the World." This focuses and expands upon the father-daughter relationship between Etta and Peter in those first four episodes, mainly dealing with canon scenes as well as a few that I have added in.

Thanks, as always, go to my fantastic beta Uroboros75.

Music: Henrietta – Chris Tilton – Fringe Season 4 Soundtrack

Disclaimer: You know, I could say that I owned Fringe, but I suspect that I would be ambered if I did, so instead I will say that I do not and leave it at that.

* * *

He hates the silence.

In this stuffy room, the air swells with it, billowing until he feels like it's going to suffocate him. It stiffens the lapels of his jacket, the hairs on his skin. Everything feels tight, taut with a tension that he can't release no matter what he tries. His muscles have permanently coiled up beneath his fatigued skin, always in a state of readiness, alertness, stealing any possible reprieve from him.

It's what makes what he's about to do so unnerving.

The idea of appearing (but not _truly_) dead is not an idea that he's particularly fond of, as death is a road that he only ever wanted to traverse once, if at all.

The mood is nothing short of morose, dry like aged whisky. Comments are sparse, hardly anything said aside from the odd request or surveillance check. Everyone's nerves are frayed. The events of the last twenty years have treated their nerves them like masses of brittle yarn, stabbing at them with the point of their decisive needle until compliance was achieved.

Peter sees the look on Etta's face, the fear mingled with sadness at what has become of everything that they are. Her parents are back, but in no better shape, and the world that greeted them was something straight out of the nightmares that they were taught to avoid. In this age, action is something regulated, controlled – like pressure or power, it is measured for efficiency, and most importantly, for supervision. They cannot be allowed to stray beyond their boundaries, because that is what the Observers fear: what they cannot control. Evolved as they are, they remain human in their biological principles.

Olivia is not quite so distant, but there is a tangible sadness in the air, tainting the space that would normally be filled with laughter and other things of an equally jovial nature. Time has driven a wedge between them, one that started when their daughter disappeared twenty years ago.

What had started as a simple flash of light cascaded into a multitude of flickers, disturbing a peace that they would never know again. One by one, the Observers had appeared all over the world, laying claim to something that they knew only in theory until that moment. The humans occupying the planet were merely an inconvenience, and those who were not swept under the rug were allowed to live under their purview, perhaps because humans are curiosities to them, perhaps due to some skewed moral perception of needing to care for the survivors, perhaps because it simply amuses them; he couldn't quite say.

Patience does not rank high on their priority list – ironic, for beings who had mastered Time – and punishment does not earn hesitation from their swift hands. People had been slaughtered, one by one dragged out into the streets where their executions were made into a bloody display for the world to see, choosing to illustrate the futility of resistance through action instead of rhetoric.

That was only months before Peter was Ambered, and even then the decline was nothing short of steep. Blood became as plentiful as water on the streets, red coloring every corner and curb like angry graffiti, vandalizing life in violent streaks and strokes. That same blood acted as the ink in the signature that hereby proclaimed them as "Natives", beings lesser than their new overseers.

Peter has never been fond of boundaries, and Olivia shares a similar sentiment. Where they had diverged was on priority of rebellion.

When Etta was kidnapped by the Observers and taken to whatever hellish holding site they had created, Peter had known no other option other than the search to bring back his baby girl. The uprising could wait.

Olivia, of course, was not as understanding. She saw the picture in terms of thousands, the people that would die if they did nothing, and in a sense she was right; he sees that now. But at the time, he had only wanted to protect the little life that was a part of him, and not let her slip away while he had a chance to save her.

Peter experiences a brief flash of memory of a man standing over the bed of his son; a gentle, caring hand reaching up to sweep away a few damp locks of hair from the child's forehead. His skin is pale, color absorbed by the merciless disease that had made his body its home. The man had tried to save his son, but in the end, had failed.

Peter will not allow the same fate to befall Etta. As long as there is a chance to save her, even an unfathomable sliver of hope, he will cling to that and fight with everything that he has to save her.

Another memory fades into the background of his mind, this time of a dark-haired woman whispering something in his ear as his skin warms to dangerous temperatures. Her voice is gentle, but the truth sears with ferocity ten times that of the fever coursing through his body.

_Be a better man than your father._

In that respect, he had fallen short. He sees Etta now, eyes filled with a hard determination that has come from the time she's spent under the watch of these bald bastards. Her mouth never yields a smile, always reserved, calm, controlled, as the Observers have taught them to be, _required_ them to be. With the frequent mental scans, it's impossible to allow any stray thought to even flicker beyond the darkest corners of one's mind. Instead, they must be buried in crypts, mass plots for creativity and originality, where freedom is the gravedigger and possession serves the watch.

Humanity has been enslaved, whipped into an obedience that has wrung every ounce of what they used to be from them, and it makes Peter sick.

He flicks his eyes over to Etta for a moment, watches her tuck the edges of her jacket against her chin, momentarily fiddling with the chain around her neck before turning for the door to the next room. Her shoulders are pulled tight to her chin, huddled beneath the pale arches of her cheekbones. She's been forced to subdue anything beyond The Soldier into a secret place that she believes no one knows of, and that's what scares him, because they all have a place like that buried deep within themselves. It's where they store all the deepest secrets of everything that they are and never want others to know, the shame and pain of pasts never released.

The most terrifying notion is not that those things exist at all, but that if they can exist in even one person, the Observers must know about those things too. As resourceful as humanity can be, resistance can sometimes prove to be a lost cause, and in the wake of that futility only darkness follows. Peter hopes that they can stop this spreading darkness before it consumes them all, eating away what is left of their spirit and replacing it with subservience. The Observers are not at all a boon for this world, and Peter intends to bring back some semblance of good to a world that has known too little of it in recent times.

Etta returns with a syringe, tip thin and sharp in the shadows as she flicks the end and motions at the table. Peter settles on the edge, drawing his legs up onto the table before sliding onto his back, pulling his legs the rest of the way.

Etta looks down at him, a brief glance of hesitation as she holds the syringe, which is significantly closer to Peter's neck now.

"You sure you want to do this?" she asks as a speck of light glints off of her necklace.

"Not really," he replies morosely. "But there isn't any other way, is there?"

She shakes her head softly. "Believe me, if there was, we would use it." Her eyes drift to the syringe and then back to Peter's, and he thinks that he spots a twinge of guilt. He doesn't reciprocate it, because there is no other choice, as much as he wishes there was.

"Hey," he says gently. "I'm gonna be fine." He tries to smile, hopefully managing something, _anything_ for Etta's sake. He hopes that when she sees it she'll return it, but all he receives is the slightest turn of the corners of her lips. Somewhere inside him, a part of him mourns for the happiness that his child has been robbed of.

He nods deeply, ready to get going with this so that maybe for a little bit, he can forget about this and everything that it's done to the people that he loves. "Let's go."

He feels the needle point press against his skin, the cool rush of the serum, then nothing more.

* * *

Later, after the bullets and bloodshed, they try to find the scattered pieces of relief that Walter's recovery brings, but they are as scrambled as his memories in this chaos, and there is little, if anything at all, to salvage.

Peter finds Etta on her cot, hair shadowed by fading sunlight as she twirls her necklace between her fingers, the tips grazing each indent of the bullet. He suspected that his daughter would be a fighter, and today she proved it. It makes him proud to know that his baby girl grew up with the same strength and fight as her mother, who she resembles so closely.

"Hey," he says, sitting next to her on the small cot.

"Hey," she replies after a moment. Her expression is calm but distracted, lost somewhere that Peter will never know. Over the past week he feels as if he's grown to know the person that his daughter has become, but only scratched the surface as to who she really is.

"You did great today," he says. "You were just like your mom out there."

She darts her eyes up for a second, followed by the faintest hint of a smile.

Peter smiles in turn, reaching a hand up to her face. "I couldn't be more proud of the strength that you have, and I'm even more proud to see you smile a little in these days."

She recoils slightly, expression turning to disappointment. "I smile…just, not like I used to." She nibbles at her bottom lip briefly, and then continues. "I remember smiling when I was a little girl, but that was before the Observers came, and their world has no room for that anymore."

"Then they'll have to make room," Peter replies. "We are here now, Etta, and we have no intention of leaving. The Observers believe that they have power over us, but we'll show them otherwise." He cups her chin, bringing her expression into the light. "In the meantime, you keep that smile, Kiddo, no matter how small it is."

Etta twirls her necklace between her fingers, and then settles her head on Peter's shoulder, where he hears her whisper faintly. "I will, Dad."

* * *

He learns later that she loses that smile all too quickly.

When the Loyalist appears in the lab – What was his name? Manfretti, wasn't it? – Etta's smile disappears, evaporating in the face of her quietly simmering rage. He can see it from across the room; the disdain, the anger at everything that those Loyalists represent, because it is everything that both he and his daughter never wish to become. Where Peter draws the line is that they are people, albeit people that made a bad choice.

He's also learned that people who make bad choices are not necessarily bad people; they simply caved to something that they couldn't control.

He sees the way her expression hardens just before she disappears into the interrogation room, and dreads what is about to take place. What hurts him the most is that he really can't stop it. His daughter has been acting on her own for so long that her own choices are the only ones she must see reason in, and in her eyes the Loyalists are on the same playing field as the Observers.

Peter pretends to hear nothing from the room, hoping to hold onto some shred of the innocent little girl that he was holding in a field twenty years ago, the little girl who made wishes on dandelion seeds and had a smile as bright as the shining sun.

But that's not his little girl anymore. Her smile has been extinguished and her wishes crushed like the dandelions she used to entrust them to.

When Etta leaves the room, her interrogation presumably complete, Peter sees her face and _knows_. He knows that another part of his daughter has been inexplicably changed by this world. She hides it well though, putting on a brave smile when Walter asks her to hand over the chain from her necklace for their cause. She cradles the bullet in her hand as if it is a little life, precious, unique and irreplaceable, much in the same way Etta will always be to Peter. She tucks the bullet back into her pocket and vanishes, along with another drop of her innocence.

After they've melted the chain from her necklace and the de-Ambering laser starts to take shape, Etta returns, along with Olivia. Their postures are remarkably different, with Etta's shoulders squared and strong while her mother's are reserved, _concerned_.

This is when Peter learns just exactly _what _Etta has been doing in that interrogation room. He can't say that he finds it appealing, but he also cannot say that he condemns her choice. It's far from ideal, and it is no doubt violating certain ethical boundaries Peter liked to think would remain steadfast, but standing in the dim Lab space, he finds himself conflicted. What scares him more? That he might well have done the same as his daughter, or that she was doing it right now?

The world is not as it once was, and the choices that his loved ones are making are clear proof of that. Peter looks to his daughter for an instant, watching the warped amber glow on her face as his heart breaks a little more.

* * *

The building is so goddamned _white_.

Peter the Loyalist and Etta the Fringe Division agent make their way through the Ministry of Science compound, weaving between Observers and Loyalists like sparrows among hawks. Peter feels tense beneath his uniform, muscles hitching up against his collar as he tries to remain steady.

Their first (and thankfully, only) problem is bypassed quickly, leaving them an open path to the electronics bay. Their route, however, is not free of some disconcerting sights. They pass by science labs, filled with myriad things that Peter doesn't consider twice. Etta pauses at each room, looking in briefly before moving on. She reaches the third room before he does, and barely hears her utter the name before he sees it.

"...Simon..."

A single head rests in the center of the room, suspended in some sort of case with at least a dozen tubules puncturing the skin. The dark hair is frazzled, splaying out from the face at odd angles. Peter feels hollowness sweep into his body, a prelude to a cold familiarity that slowly seeps into his veins.

Then the head opens its eyes and blinks.

Peter is startled, but it's Etta who has the worse reaction. She launches herself for the door, and it takes all that Peter has to hold her back, pulling her away from a fate that she cannot undo.

"Etta, stop, stop, stop!" he hisses, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. He urges her to draw back from this, to the future that they are fighting to save and liberate. "There will be a time for vengeance and a time for grieving but it is not now," he pleads. "They will pay for what they've done."

He feels her relent, and when she faces him, he can see the rage in her eyes, the unspeakable pain that he knew once in another timeline, a pain involving a bullet and funeral pyre and words that could never fill the current gap blasted into the lives of so many. He cannot imagine the wound sheared into her now, seeing her friend in such a state, used as a mutilated guinea pig in these tests that the Observers conduct out of nothing more than simple curiosity.

He knows that his last words have resonated with Etta for a reason, and he realizes that just maybe, he was uttering words that she's been longing to hear for a while. Maybe it's because…that's all she wants to hear. There's a sick heaviness in Peter's gut at the thought, but he realizes also, that this may be what Etta needs right now, something to hold onto, _someone_ that she can reach out to and identify with.

So he finally adds an "I promise" to his phrase before they carry on, meaning every word of it.

This is one promise that he will keep.

* * *

Night has already fallen, scattering light into the darkest corners where it finds no safe harbor. Peter walks silently through the apartment, pausing at Etta's room before heading for his and Olivia's. He knocks gently, hearing a whispered reply before he enters. Etta is sitting on her cot, nestled beneath a column of pale moonlight as she cradles something in her hands.

"Hey," Peter says, moving to settle on the bunk beside her, keeping his left hand out of sight. "How are you holding up?"

Etta turns her face briefly, allowing the moonlight to reveal the few patterns of shimmering lines on her face. "I've been better," she replies, tossing what was in her hands onto a small table in front of her. Peter sees now that it is a photo of her and Simon, taken in some place and at some time that he will never know.

"I'm sorry about Simon," he says, reaching a hand out to her shoulder. She lets him rest it there, running it in a gentle circle. "If you need anyth–"

"–Don't," Etta snaps, brushing his hand away harshly. "The only thing that can possibly avenge Simon is Windmark's death, but even that is a long way off. So no, there is nothing you can do right now."

She moves away from him, curling up on her cot with her back to him. Peter holds back a sigh and stands, heading for the door when he remembers something else. He holds out his left hand, in which he has two yellow dandelions.

"I got these for you," he says, catching her attention again. "I know it's not much, but you loved them as a kid and I figured that…you could use a little something bright right now."

He thinks that he sees her smile briefly, or maybe it's a trick of the moonlight. "I remember…I used to make wishes on them when they had turned to seeds."

"And you'd always have trouble getting those last few to fly away," Peter says with a soft chuckle.

Everything goes quiet for a moment, suspended in the trapezes of starlight and recollection, bound to a memory that Peter thought had faded to a shadow.

"Thank you," Etta says.

"No problem, Kiddo," Peter answers, setting them in an empty glass by the door. "Sleep well," he whispers, and departs.

* * *

Where they find themselves barely a day later is remarkably devoid of dandelions. Here, trees reach up into the sky, nimble fingers spindling between clouds and dim sunlight scattering amongst the thick, green leaves. The forest is dense, which is likely why its inhabitants chose it.

Etta holds out a small pill that is a light green in color, claiming it to be an apple. Olivia declines, as does Peter, who simply cannot conceive of a pill having the same taste as a fruit that is at least ten times its size. It makes him wish for an apple pie, like the one that he an Olivia shared at a café once upon a time. Olivia claims not to know it, and Peter knows that she does.

He wishes later that he hadn't pressed her about it, hearing the slight tinge of pain in her voice when she explains why she doesn't want to think about those times when she thought that she may never see Etta again.

It's all he can do to reach out to her, his wife, and reassure her. Reassure her that they are a family, and that he knows the love that exists between them, one that he will never allow to be broken.

When he finds Etta later, he wraps her in a tight hug and doesn't let her go for a moment. When he does, she gives him a quizzical look, asking why.

He just says, "Because I love you, Kiddo."

* * *

Their journey back from rural Pennsylvania is mercifully uneventful, and only few days after their departure they are back at the lab. Back to siphoning gas and decoding Ambered analog relics in the hopes of finding their salvation.

Peter scuttles into a shop when he notices the contents in the window (not to mention the Observer that's trailing on his heels). He wonders if he may be able to find a replacement necklace for Etta, seeing as she had to sacrifice her old one for the de-Ambering laser. The shopkeeper speaks in a strong Jamaican accent, and Peter feels slight relief at the absence of an identifying tattoo on his face. He browses around the shop, appearing as casual as possible in a place like this, but things go awry when he goes to mention what he's looking for.

"This is what you are looking for," replies a matter-of-fact voice, cutting off Peter mid-sentence.

Peter turns to see an Observer, one clad in the same suit that the others wear, complete with an immaculate black fedora. He holds up his hand, a silver chain clenched between his pale fingers.

Peter feels his body chill at the sight of an Observer so close, his muscles tense and his heartbeat increases. The shop seems too small in that instant, morphing into a projector for every one of his thoughts.

_Don't let them in_, he thinks as he reaches for the necklace.

"Yup, that's it," he says before turning back to counter.

"It will look good on her," the Observer intones. "The young, blonde woman."

_Shit_.

Peter quickly scrambles his thoughts, pulling images of baseball to the forefront of his mind to protect the image of Etta. He imagines a roaring stadium, a stitched leather ball thrown fast at the home plate, with the player swinging the bat _hard_…

"What is baseball?"

"Excuse me?" Peter asks, turning back to the Observer in order to gain a few more precious seconds.

"You were thinking of the Red Sox," the Observer clarifies. "What is baseball?"

"It's a sport," Peter answers. "Or was, anyway." He then turns back to the store owner. "How much?"

The owner barely gets to ask him what he's got to trade when the Observer bites back. "I am upsetting you," he intuits. "You do not like being read."

_Damn right I don't._

He takes a moment, breathes silently and collects what little calm he can. The air ripples with tension, great waves of it piercing his skin like icicles. He needs to get out of here.

"Who's upset?" he bluffs, rifling through his pockets for something to pay for the necklace."I've got nothing to hide. What's there to be upset about?"

His fingers catch a thin, papery edge in his pocket, which he immediately latches onto. He pulls out the rare bill from his pocket and hands it to the storeowner, trying to hide the slight shake in his fingers. "That take care of it?" Peter asks, not altogether interested in the answer. He knows what something like that is worth, and that should be enough to give him an exit opportunity.

He makes it out of the shop, the Observer right on his heels. "There is something wrong," he hears the Observer say, alerting the Loyalists only meters away. "Detain him."

The attention of the Loyalist contingent shifts instantly, tearing after Peter in the second it takes him to clock the Observer across the face with his gasoline container. He drops it on the ground and bolts, abandoning the fuel in favor of escape.

The streets are dark, slick with a blackness that he doesn't care to identify. Murky light bleeds into his eyes as Peter races around a street corner, reaching for the man hole cover only feet away from him. He lifts the grate away and jumps down into the darkness.

When he lands he rolls away, ignoring the slight throb in his legs. He shifts behind a corner, out of sight but in wait. He knows that the Loyalists will see the open cover; he couldn't have risked taking the time to pull it over. He reaches for the holster at his hip, silently pulling out his gun in anticipation of a likely attack. He has the advantage of cover, but he's severely lacking in terms of force.

There's a light _clink_ and a hollow _hum_ before Peter sees it roll around the corner and stop at his feet. A small, black object with blinking red lights.

_Stun grenade_, he thinks and immediately rushes away in the opposite direction. His feet are pounding against the ground too slowly, the air thinning out as the explosion sucks it up, energy building at the focal point. There's a moment of complete silence before he hears the rush of the explosion, the pounding roar that it sends rattling through his body.

Then comes the heat.

It starts as a slight tingle, warm and gentle along his shins and back. Then it builds, rapidly turning into hot coals biting at his heels, burning pincers reaching for his flesh.

There's not enough time.

In a few seconds, the explosion reaches him, pushing him off the ground and knocking him into darkness.

* * *

He awakes disoriented, the world spinning like a toppled kaleidoscope over him. Sunlight dribbles over his skin, pooling against his eyelashes. A dark form leans over him, and when clarity returns, Peter recognizes that a young boy is standing over him with a curious look on his face.

"Is that a real gun?" he asks.

Peter looks first at the boy and then to his hand, which still holds his weapon from the previous night. A more thorough inspection yields that he is very, _very_ far from his previous location.

"Where am I?" Peter counters, rising from the ground.

"You came out of that storm drain, there" the boy replies with a casual motion to a gaping pipe. "You're bleeding."

Peter brings a cautious finger to his face, feeling slickness along his brow. He brings his fingers away, finding them scarlet with blood. He stands slowly, careful of his injuries.

No dizziness, no blurry vision; all good signs. He reaches into his pocket, relieved to find the cool chain of the necklace still there. He gives a nod of thanks to the boy and moves on, disappearing into the shadows as quickly as he emerged from them.

* * *

When he gets back to the Lab, he sees that they've got another tape ready, but that doesn't spare him Olivia's immediate concern. He tells her that he's fine, and for now that seems to satisfy her worry. He appreciates it, but they have more important things to worry about than a few bumps and bruises, and stopping for all these little things will only lengthen their path to success.

The incident with the Observer draws even worse faces from the rest, with Etta noticeably deflating at the mention of what the Observer saw: an image of her. He feels guilty for letting this slip, letting that one precious slice of information be plucked out and devoured. He tried to hide it and keep it safe but he couldn't. They were just too fast.

He can tell from Etta's expression that it's a hard truth to swallow, but one that they all must swallow nonetheless. They will have to learn to block them out, one way or another. Etta promises to teach them all, and in return, Peter presents her with the necklace.

"You had to give up your necklace so we could work on the laser. I wanted to make sure you got a new one."

Etta smiles for the first time in days. She reaches out and gives him a hug, and from the corner of his eye Peter sees Olivia give a small smile as well.

For just one moment, they are more than soldiers. They are family again.

"Thank you," Etta says as she looks the bullet over in her fingers, safely resting around her neck again.

"Worth every bump and bruise, Kiddo," he replies.

She cracks another smile. "Well you know the expression. _No good deed goes unpunished_."

Peter holds up his arms in a display. "Living proof!"

* * *

_No good deed goes unpunished_.

But why…why does it have to be like this?

They had made it out of the Lab unscathed, gotten past troves of Loyalists and Observer guards to get to where they were. They had _survived_.

But, tragically, nothing lasts forever.

They knew as soon as they heard the gunshot in the warehouse, heard that resounding _crack_ of thunder that rumbled through his bones, heard that soft but heavy whisper from Olivia that was their daughter's name that something was gravely wrong. Peter had run from the room where they found Walter, rushing out onto a deck that overlooked the rest of the warehouse.

That's when he saw her.

Etta…bleeding from a wound in her abdomen, red blooming out onto her clothes as her hands clutched something, something that he couldn't focus on.

"Etta," he breathes, words falling from his lips like rain.

He runs to her, blindly running down stairs that he doesn't even look for, reaching for his daughter like she's the last person in the world. He reaches her and sees the wound.

It's bad, so incredibly, horribly bad.

"No, no, no, no," he mumbles, pressing his hands against the bloody wound.

He has to stop this. He can't lose her again.

Olivia and Walter arrive seconds later, Olivia cupping Etta's face as Peter rests his hands on her shoulder.

"Etta, look at me, okay?" Olivia says, and Peter sees it in her eyes, the fear masked beneath her maternal instinct, trying so hard to hold onto something strong for their daughter, because even though they will do everything that they can to save her, she fears as much as he does that they will lose her. "You're going to be alright," Olivia reassures her. "But we have to move you, okay?"

Yes, moving her is good; getting her away from here is good. Anywhere that those bald bastards can't reach her is better than this.

"No, there's no point," Etta says weakly.

The words smack into Peter with brutal force. Did his daughter just say…no, he won't accept it,_ can't_ accept it. He refuses to leave his own daughter here in this place. He shakes his head at the very notion of it.

"We're not going to leave you here," he replies.

She blinks once, taking in a shallow breath. "You have to."

Her words drain the feeling from his body, filling it with hollowness that he's only known once before, on a rocky shore where there was fire and nothing more.

He's going to lose her.

"You won't make it with me," she adds, trying to justify her decision. "I'll slow you down," her hand reaches for Peter's face, barely touches it and falls away. Peter hears a short _beep_ and looks down.

Etta pulls an antimatter grenade out of her sleeve, the orange numbers counting down to the explosion. He can see the resolve in her face, the settlement in this decision.

"You have to leave."

Peter's first reaction is complete rejection; he will _not_ abandon his daughter, but he can't will his arms to move, or anything. Action feels foreign, and the only thing he can manage at that moment is to sit there and stare at his daughter, knowing that what she has decided to do will haunt him.

Olivia's seen the grenade too, because she reaches for Etta's face again, her expression deadly serious. "Etta," she whispers, her voice nearly breaking. "I love you, _so_ much."

Peter's hands are caught in mid-motion, and all he manages to do is stroke her hair while she replies. "I know."

Etta passes something to Olivia, her hand cupping his wife's gently, but tenderly. When Etta pulls away he sees what she's given Olivia: the necklace. It's a signal that this is final, that she is really letting go.

_No, no; kiddo, you can't._

"No," Peter whispers, reaching for his daughter. "No, I can't leave you. Not again." He feels the tears on his face, a hot shower of pain that just won't stop. He left his little girl once, when he was a different person, but he is not the same, and he is not about to make the same error that he did twenty years ago.

"No, no, no," he whispers, holding Etta close while someone tells him that they have to go. But he won't go, not yet. He has to say goodbye. He has to say _something_ to her.

"I'm so sorry, Etta," he whispers, before Walter starts to pull him away.

Olivia reaches out to Peter, hand gripping his shoulder. "Peter, we have to go," she whispers, her own voice wavering.

"I know," he says. He pulls Etta close one last time and whispers an "I love you" before he lets her go, placing her back against the post and letting Walter and Olivia pull him to his feet. They run for the exit, leaving behind one of their own. Peter feels numb, unaware of anything but the painful void that is forming within him.

How they make it beyond the blast radius he doesn't know, but when he watches that warehouse disappear in the implosion he is silent.

Etta is gone.

In the few moments that he stands there, motionless and oblivious he realizes one crucial fact.

Captain Windmark, the one who killed his daughter, is still out there, somewhere.

Peter stands on the gravel, overlooking the remains of their battlefield, and knows with a deep conviction that this is far from over.

* * *

_Fin_


End file.
